In Levi in mid-November, the sun rises at around 9.40am and sets before 2.40pm. It is not always cold, and that is precisely the problem. Since the cancellation of 2015, the Lapland resort has stopped waiting for winter. It puts it in storage instead.
2015, the winter that never came
In November 2015, the Levi slaloms were cancelled for lack of snow. It was not the first time: the races of 2007 and 2011 had already been struck from the calendar. This time, the resort drew a lasting lesson.
From the spring of 2016, it began setting snow aside for the following autumn. The principle is simple. Snow is piled up at the end of winter, covered over, and spends the summer sheltered. In October, it is uncovered and spread on the slope.
© @ worldcuplevi
Putting that into practice is far harder. Levi teamed up with Finnfoam, a Finnish insulation manufacturer, and with Snow Secure. The piles are covered with 70 mm polystyrene panels. According to the system’s backers, summer losses fall to 5 to 10%, against 30 to 50% with traditional methods. The first stockpile held 30,000 m³. The 2025 one came close to 300,000 m³.
Hannu Levinheimo, forty years of snowmaking
Stored snow is not the whole story. The rest comes from the guns, and from one man. Hannu Levinheimo has been in charge of snowmaking at Levi since 1985. “When I started, we had four manual guns,” he recalls.
Today the resort has more than 300, automated and controlled remotely. Water is pumped from the Ounasjoki, the river that flows five kilometres away. According to Levinheimo, the current fleet produces markedly more snow with the same amount of water and energy.
Levi Black, a slope apart
Levi Black is nothing like a great Alpine face. Its strength lies elsewhere: a maximum gradient of 52%, an average of 31% and two short, punchy runs with no respite.
In the summer of 2019, Levi invested heavily in its western sector. A new lift was built there and the lighting was entirely replaced with LEDs. The course was re-homologated in September 2019. The floodlights are not mere decoration. In November, daylight lasts less than five hours, and the second run is often raced as it fades.
An Olympic training centre
In January 2025, Levi was certified as an Olympic training centre, at the end of a project launched in the spring of 2021. The following autumn, more than 150 teams, some 1,800 people, came to train there. “It’s a little more than last year,” notes Jukka Leino, who coordinates the centre.
The leading Alpine nations cross paths there: Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the United States. So do Czechia, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Australia and Argentina. A logistical asset: Kittilä airport is only a quarter of an hour from the slopes.
What Levi has understood
Levi does not fight the climate: it works with it. Snow is saved, water is measured, light is manufactured. It is this know-how, more than latitude, that has made the resort the eagerly awaited opener of the world slalom calendar. The terrain, for its part, has not changed.
Part two: the Finns, the reindeer and the records. Read on
Article published on 5 November 2025, revised on 6 October 2026: November 2025 weather forecasts removed, facts reviewed, text tightened.